Greg Palast: The Talented Mr. Griffin (Gonzales/Arkansas AG/Voter Suppression)

from In These Times:


The Talented Mr. Griffin

The senators grilling Alberto Gonzales should ask him about Arkansas’ new attorney general—and his history of suppressing minority voters

By Greg Palast

With the sacking of eight honest prosecutors, the Bush administration has accelerated its politicization of the Justice Department.

The only thing worse than sacking an honest prosecutor is replacing one with a “criminal.” In this case, Timothy Griffin, who during the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign worked as deputy research director for the Republican National Committee (RNC) conducting “oppo” (opposition) research. On Dec. 15, Bush named Griffin as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, replacing fired prosecutor Bud Cummins.

I don’t use the term “criminal” lightly. In August 2004, while he was research director for the RNC, he sent a series of confidential e-mails to Republican Party chieftains. But instead of using the party honchos’ e-mail addresses at GeorgeWBush.com, he sent these notes to GeorgeWBush.org. That domain belongs to a brilliant jokester, John Wooden, who, suspecting he had something important in hand, forwarded them to BBC Television Newsnight, where I worked at the time.

Griffin’s dozens of e-mails contained what he called “caging lists”—simple Excel spreadsheets with the names and addresses of voters.

Sounds innocent enough. But once the addresses were plotted on maps—70,000 names in Florida alone—it became clear that virtually every name was in a minority-majority voting precinct. And most of the lists were made up of itinerant, vulnerable voters: students, the homeless and, notably, soldiers sent overseas.
...(snip)...

Why was it so important to Karl Rove and then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers to make Griffin a U.S. attorney in Arkansas? A couple reasons come to mind. Maybe the Republicans were hoping to revive their investigations of presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton’s tenure as first lady of Arkansas. Or perhaps they wanted an operative experienced in suppressing Democratic turnout in what Rove had designated as one of the 11 battleground states in the 2008 election.

As Richard Fricker observed on ConsortiumNews.com: “With Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor expected to face a tough re-election fight, Arkansas could be a possible Republican senatorial pickup in 2008. Arkansas also has a large African-American population, and Griffin has had experience in ‘voter fraud’ investigations that have targeted the registrations of black voters.”

The Bush administration was well aware of Griffin’s role in the 2004 Florida election. In an Aug. 24 e-mail, the Justice Department’s Monica Goodling wrote to Sampson, that Griffin’s nomination would face opposition in Congress because he was involved “in massive Republican projects in Florida and elsewhere by which Republicans challenged tens of thousand of absentee votes. Coincidentally, many of those challenged votes were in black precincts.”

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3144/the_talented_mr_griffin/

the truth is coming out. They just want to STEAL elections. How un-democratic and un-patriotic of them... It's on a long list...

k&r